CELEBRITIES : Lifestyles of the rich & shameless
It was the year when Tom Cruise got madder and madder, Jennifer Aniston got sadder and sadder, the World Cup WAGS shopped for Ingerland, and Macca's missus Heather turned into, well, Header.
The citizens of Celeb Land had a bumper year in 2006. Their oddly-named newborns sparked magazine bidding wars, they plunged into marriages which turned out to be shorter than Britney's skirt, and in one mind-boggling instance of celebrity lunacy, got paid $1m to travel to Vienna and wave at people.
Without a doubt, this was the Year of the WAG. The stuttering progress of the England team in the World Cup in June was completely overshadowed by the hedonistic consumerism of their wives and girlfriends. The bunch of hare-brained poseurs was splashed across every paper and magazine during the summer, as Coleen McLoughlin, Abigail Clancy, Carly Zucker and the rest gave it a lash in the boutiques and bars of Baden-Baden.
German newspaper Bild reported that six WAGs, including Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Tweedy, spent ?80,000 in one hour of shopping in the town. All that dosh, and they still look like blinged-up barmaids.
The Ryder Cup WAGs, or GWAGs, put on a much more stylish show when the golfing circus rolled into the K Club in September, in particular Melissa Lehman, the ultra-chic wife of US team captain Tom. But one GWAG made headlines around the world when Tiger Woods took a verbal nine-iron to The Dubliner magazine at a packed press conference over a spoof feature it ran on his wife, Elin Nordegren, that included fake nude pictures of her. Nor is the unfortunate magazine out of the Woods yet, as Elin launched a libel lawsuit against it last month.
And Cheryl 'Don't Call Me WAG' Tweedy organised what she must have hoped would be Celebrity Wedding of the Year, when she got hitched to Chelsea and England footballer Ashley Cole at the posh Wrotham Park hotel in Hertfordshire on July 15.
Taste was no object at the blingtastic ceremony: the Girls Aloud bride rocked a ?145,000 Roberto Cavalli frock and ?150,000 wedding-band. The bash was estimated to have cost around ?750,000, but OK! magazine stumped up ?1.5m for the exclusive shots.
However, that wedding was like a knees-up in a workingman's club compared to the lavish joining of TomKat in holy matrimony on November 18.
This Hollywood union had it all: a fairytale castle in Italy, an Armani wedding gown covered in Swarovski crystals, A-List guests including Will Smith, Brooke Shields and J-Lo, and a prolonged snog at the altar which had everyone roaring in the aisles.
And, of course, the nutso Scientology wedding vows that burbled about giving cats and combs to the bride - but made no mention of Katie Holmes' pre-nup.
Guest of honour at the wedding was TomKat's sprog, Suri, who beamed down to Earth on April 18 and then promptly disappeared. Her invisibility provided hours of entertainment for wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who set up 'Where's Suri?' websites and speculated that the child didn't actually exist. Finally, after almost five months, Suri debuted on the cover of Vanity Fair in early September, and turned out to be a real cutie, with a shock of dark hair and cherubic face.
But Suri wasn't the top celebrity sprog - that honour went to Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, born to Brad'n'Ange in Namibia on May 27, the third child in their Benetton ad-style brood. Swarms of paparazzi staked out the hospital, kept at bay by the obliging local police force.
Shiloh's birth sparked a ferocious bidding dogfight in the media for first photos, with People magazine securing the American rights for a reported, and staggering, $4.1m and Hello! forking over $3.5m for international rights, all of which went to charity. In total, Shiloh's first shoot netted $10m, making it the most expensive celebrity image ever.
Madonna's attempt to 'do an Angelina' and adopt an African child has propelled the star into the spotlight, but not in a good way. She may face a legal battle to keep the one-year-old Malawian boy, David Banda, after she was accused of using her celebrity clout to fast-track the adoption process in October. To add further complications, David isn't an orphan, as his birth father, Yohane Banda is alive and has just remarried his pregnant girlfriend.
2006 was the year of the Celebrity Split. The headline-writers had a field day in May when Paul McCartney and Heather Mills announced they were breaking up after four years of marriage ( All You Need is Hate, She's Leaving Home etc). Since then, a war has broken out between the pair that makes the Iraq conflict look like a spot of handbags.
Photos of Heather which were more tarty than arty were splashed across the press, and among her increasingly colourful claims was that Paul was violent to her. She reportedly wants a hefty slice of his fortune - up to ST£200m, and a court showdown next year is looking inevitable - which should please the headline writers no end.
Other couples who hitched a lift to Splitsville included Britney Spears, who finally gave her shiftless spouse of two years, Kevin Federline, the heave-ho by sending him a Dear John text, just a few weeks after giving birth to their second son, Jayden. The 25-year-old mother-of-two celebrated by ditching her underwear and going on the batter in LA with pointless trollop Paris Hilton.
Also Jennifer Aniston and her hard-partying paramour Vince Vaughn did The Break Up for real in November, ending constant speculation that they were engaged/expecting/over...
often all three stories appearing in the same week. And more bad news for Jen - womanising wastrel Matthew McConaughey is reportedly looking for her number.
And if ever proof were needed that anyone who gets hitched in a minuscule bikini isn't too serious about the 'till death do us part' guff, it's in the farcical marriage of Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock. After going steady for, oh, about eight weeks, the pair got hitched on a yacht in St Tropez in July. Four months later, Pamela announced she had miscarried, and then filed for divorce on November 27 - she confessed she was pleased to have split from Kid Rock "just as quickly as I married him".
As the year comes to an end, two more 2006 love stories that dominated the tabloids still hang in the balance. In October, Kate Moss confirmed she was engaged to human car-crash Pete Doherty, although the shambolic singer's continued love affair with drink and drugs seems to have finally put paid to Kate's visions of wedded bliss.
But the pair have reconciled before after a split in November 2005. Pete attributed his dumping that time to the fact that "I can't buy her diamonds and my dick is too small". Nothing to do with the crack, smack and string of arrests, then.
And after another whirlwind romance/Disneyland wedding ceremony - this time in Sydney on June 25 - Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban settled into domestic bliss. But on October 19 her husband, who had supposedly reformed his addictions to drugs, alcohol and women, was back in rehab. The skinny actress is standing by her cowboy for now, but one more tumble off the wagon for the country singer and one wouldn't bet against seeing this couple in the Celebrity Divorce list this time next year.
